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The stars of one of the fall’s biggest animated features might be monsters, but they were a joy to work with.

So says Brian Scott, an animator and Amarillo native.

“Hotel Transylvania,” opening Friday, teams such famous creatures as Dracula, the Frankenstein monster and the Mummy — but with a twist.

“They definitely have a history, not only in film lore, but also culturally,” Scott said.

“You don’t want to abandon the connection people have with these characters, but what we thought was exciting was the chance to reinvent a generation’s feeling of a character.

“Kids going to see this movie — for years after this, I imagine they’ll know our version of Dracula, our version of the Mummy.

“So it’s a great opportunity for us to reinvent these characters in a comedic sense — far less frightening and much more kid-friendly,” he said.

In the film, Dracula (voiced by Adam Sandler) has to deal with the fact his daughter Mavis (Selena Gomez) is growing up and is starting to get curious about the world outside her dad’s monsters-only resort.

Andy Samberg voices a human character who accidentally runs across Drac’s lair and — wouldn’t you know it? — falls in love at first site with Mavis.

“Transylvania” was intended as “a big, zany comedy,” director Genndy Tartakovsky told the Battle Creek Enquirer before the film’s debut at the Toronto Film Festival. “But at the same time, we wanted the strong emotional core — and how do you do that? The biggest fights — no, not fights — but the biggest things we would debate were in the emotional sequences. You get this big, emotional sequence and your tendency right after is to take the air out of it, to make fun of it. But we didn’t want to do it each time because we felt everything we’ve done to set up, we’re getting rid of.”

Scott said it was important to balance the characters’ horror roots with their roles in a kids’ film.

“We address that early on in the movie ... that these characters were perceived as scary monsters when they really aren’t that different from you or I,” Scott said. “They just look different or behave different. ... We’re juxtaposing people’s expectations of why they are with how they behave in our movie.

“We’re playing to people’s expectations while also sort of twisting them.”

Scott — who moved from Amarillo a few years after he was born but whose father, Mike, still lives in Canyon — grew up loving animated films.

“I remember just watching TV with my parents one night, and there was a program on called ‘Movie Magic,’ a behind-the-scenes of how these things get done — really rudimentary visual effects, people getting paid to blow things up or to animate a cat.

“I sort of honed in on that. It was something I could really apply myself at.”

After graduating from the Ringling College of Art and Design in Florida, Scott started working on a direct-to-DVD Christian-themed feature, “Roach Approach: Don’t Miss the Boat,” then headed out to California.

Scott, now 30, got in on the ground floor of Sony Pictures Animation’s first feature, 2006’s “Open Season,” then moved onto “Monster House” and “Surf’s Up.”

His big break came with 2009’s “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs,” where he wound up supervising a team of animators working remotely from Albuquerque, N.M. From there, he has supervised animation on Tim Burton’s live-action film “Alice in Wonderland” and on the cartoon feature “Arthur Christmas.”

With “Transylvania,” Scott led a team responsible for several sequences of the film, including the movie’s opening scene, during which the audience meets Dracula and Mavis for the first time.

“It’s a really nice sequence that shows a lot of heart between Dracula and his daughter,” Scott said. “It’s that moment that shows these monsters are like us.”